Proces rozwoju dogmatu jako funkcja świadomości Kościoła w teorii Pawła Swietłowa (1961-1942)

Abstract

Theological reflection continually reinforced the understanding of nature and the factors and inner-laws leading the process of a deeper and deeper understanding of God’s message in the Church. A clearing up of the dogmatic progress, which is a manifestation of life and inner dynamism of the Church, has a fundamental ecumenical meaning. The reason for this is that the unity of faith in the visible community of the believers in Christ supposes the common acceptance of determined doctrinal content. The 19th century in which evolutionism triumphed and new catholic dogmas were proclaimed, also placed Orthodoxy before the problem of dogmatic progress. In Russian Orthodox Theology of this era, there exists a few streams clearing up this phenomenon. Traditional theology does not accept the possibility, of a new dogmatic definition since the last ecumenical council in 787, and a dogmatists attribute to dogma a symbolistic and pragmatic character. The theology of Chomjakov, especially in the interpretation of the neoslavophils, clearly heads in the direction of dogmatic relativism. Among the orthodox theologians of this era, V. Solov’ev and P. Svetlov endeavouring to overcome dogmatic conservatism and relativism, were the first thus far to introduce a deeper and more systematic reflection of dogmatic progress. P. Svetlov, apologist, ecumenist and disciple of A. Chomjakov, understands revelation as an event and living fact and faith as its living acceptance. In ecclesiology he accepts the idea of conciliarity (sobornost’) and the necessity of receiving decisions made by the council throughout the entire community of the Church. As far as dogmatic progress is concerned, P. Svetlov understands it, as it seems, as a process and function of the consciousness of the Church. Church consciousness is a super-personal reality and the harmony of consciousness of all the members of the Church, based on the unity of life and love in the Church. Exactly in this theandric consciousness, the Church touches ontological supernatural reality and grasps it in direct perception through experience. Next, it accomplishes conceptualisation and objectivation of preconceptual content of faith. Church consciousness embraces 3 aspects: consciousness of the faith of the Church, collective dogmatic consciousness, and individual consciousness. General consciousness of faith embraces the content of revelation taken through direct intuition of faith of the entire community of the Church. A certain part of the content of revelation is not only believed, but at the same time grasped in the concepts and expressed in the verbal structure of dogmatic formula (defined dogma), or it is still found in the stage of conceptual crystallization (truths not yet explained). That part of the content of revelation, which already is, or still is not the norm for faith and understanding of the members of the community of the Church, creates a collective dogmatic consciousness, in other words, doctrine of the Church. Collective consciousness is the primitive source of experience, faith and individual consciousness. It becomes the personal experience, belonging to particular individuals. The process of the assimilation of content of collective consciousness thru an individual, on the level of faith and reason, leads to an arising of theological thought. The consciousness of the Church can be considered in the statical and dynamic sense. The revealed content, grasped thru faith or also thru the mind of the Church, is absolutely unchangeable in its substance and constitutes the statical aspect of the consciousness of the Church. This consciousness is however at the same time one of the aspects of the life of the Church. This life of the Church continually trends toward the grasping and expression of its faith in the attainable concepts for human reasoning. The essence of consciousness in the dynamic sense depends on continual activity and – on the process of cognition of revelation, which is achieved in it. The process of dogmatic development covers 2 cycles. The first cycle of the process takes place between revalation grasped in a manner of preconceptual understanding thru experience in the consciousness of the faith of the Church, and its dogmatic consciousness. It concludes with a dogmatic definition. The second cycle of development is fulfilled between collective dogmatic consciousness and individual consciousness, and leads to individual understanding of the given dogma, in other words, to particular theological opinion. In sequence this opinion tends to be attested and verified by ecclesiastical tradition, and can become a starting point for a successful process of explaining dogma up to this point not yet explained. The integral process of dogmatic development depends therefore on a living and permanent circulation of truth in the Church. Thru new dogmatic formulations, the quantity of truth revealed and possessed thru the Church does not grow, but enriches only the supply of revealed truth at the same time explained in the Church, in other words, a logical cognition of faith grows and faith itself becomes more rational. In this process the Church expresses and continually verifys unity and identity of its truth, which is one of its outer-manifestations. The. process of dogmatic development just as dogma itself has a theandric character, because the divine and human, super-logic and logic elements harmoniously work together in it and create their synthesis. The collective conception of Church consciousness in Svetlov’s work, as it seems, deserves to bę critically evaluated. The reason for this is that, it is hard to accept the possibility of fusion of individual conciousness in one super-personal common consciousness of the community of the Church. Instead, Svetlov comes closer to contemporary theological thinking particularly in the concept of revelation and in general intuition of the process of dogmatic development. In this process revelation is not subjected to the law of evolution, but only human concepts are perfected and the reflective consciousness of faith in the Church is enriched. The theory of P. Svetlov shows influences of subjectivism of liberal theology and dependence on the ecclesiological mysticism of A. Chomjakov. The value in the theory of Svetlov is that he called attention: to the variety of factors in dogmatic development, to the historical and dynamic aspect of the message of God, and to its immanence and the necessity of reception of dogma in the community of the Church.